UPDATE: Dartmouth players vote to unionize

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This raises a lot of business or finance questions.

1) Does this apply to just privates or are publics eventually involved? There is another ongoing case with USC right now.
2) Does this apply to just revenue sports? Or all?
3) If so, does this eliminate walk-on positions across all sports? Just revenue sports?
4) How do athletes get paid? If they are now paid out for their scholarship plus whatever on top, do they now have to pay tuition out of that?
5) What do tax consequences now look like? At many schools where it is expensive, they will now likely be pushed into earning brackets where they may actually owe taxes if back of the napkin math is correct.
6) Do these earnings now make them ineligible for Pell grant, other aid and/or other scholarships?
7) What if international players are here on student visas? Would basketball allow them to qualify for a work visa? Work visas are much more difficult to get.
8) How do student fees continue with a changed amateurism model? Do students want their fees stopped if they are essentially paying peers?
 
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This raises a lot of business or finance questions.

1) Does this apply to just privates or are publics eventually involved? There is another ongoing case with USC right now.
2) Does this apply to just revenue sports? Or all?
3) If so, does this eliminate walk-on positions across all sports? Just revenue sports?
4) How do athletes get paid? If they are now paid out for their scholarship plus whatever on top, do they now have to pay tuition out of that?
5) What do tax consequences now look like? At many schools where it is expensive, they will now likely be pushed into earning brackets where they may actually owe taxes if back of the napkin math is correct.
6) Do these earnings now make them ineligible for Pell grant, other aid and/or other scholarships?
7) What if international players are here on student visas? Would basketball allow them to qualify for a work visa? Work visas are much more difficult to get.
8) How do student fees continue with a changed amateurism model? Do students want their fees stopped if they are essentially paying peers?
Can’t wait for it to dawn on these geniuses that many of these states are at-will employment states.

Hope the Dartmouth players who are 5-14 don’t have to worry about getting fired, that’d be too bad.
 
Can’t wait for it to dawn on these geniuses that many of these states are at-will employment states.

Hope the Dartmouth players who are 5-14 don’t have to worry about getting fired, that’d be too bad.

What is interesting is the NLIs will likely become employment contracts. What's hilarious here is that many employment contracts have non-compete agreements. The athletes could find themselves right back into a situation where their semi-restricted on movement, which is what most of this was supposed to open up.

If this ends up staying on appeal and then USC's athletes win their case and eventually makes its way into the publics as well, Olympic and non-revenue sports are as good as gone. I think a bunch of schools end up axing football, too, especially if this employee classification extends to those non-revenue sports as the costs schools would be burdened with due to having to be Title IX compliant would be massive.
 
In the end, I think what you'll see is schools moving to very lean athletic offerings -- probably the sheer minimum to maintain D1 status. I could also see the schools petitioning the NCAA to change those numbers down from 7/7 or 6/8, too. The only sports that remain would likely be those with provable or potential ROI or would be a loss leader for status and marketing -- like lacrosse and water polo at the "rich" schools.
 

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What is interesting is the NLIs will likely become employment contracts. What's hilarious here is that many employment contracts have non-compete agreements. The athletes could find themselves right back into a situation where their semi-restricted on movement, which is what most of this was supposed to open up.

If this ends up staying on appeal and then USC's athletes win their case and eventually makes its way into the publics as well, Olympic and non-revenue sports are as good as gone. I think a bunch of schools end up axing football, too, especially if this employee classification extends to those non-revenue sports as the costs schools would be burdened with due to having to be Title IX compliant would be massive.

Back in the "height of "athlete exploitation" " if a kid left a school, many could not attend a peer (in-conference member) school, well, not on scholarship (See: Funderburke, Lawrence - I can only 'afford' to play MBB for the Fuckeyes of Columbus Ohio...)

HAVE to believe a WHOLE lot of these (future) employment contracts will DEFINITELY contain a non-compete clause... say a two-three non-compete in 'similar position..."
 

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how long before the scabs start playing. also have fun cleaning the locker room and answering phones
 
There won't be scabs, they will simply drop sports or pare them down drastically. Been trying to get one of these sports law influencers to finally say what they have tap danced around and several today started saying club sports.


The amount of educational opportunities that are going to be wiped out if they move to an employee model is going to be vast and drastic. Will mean hundreds of thousands of kids that got a college education in exchange for some athletic ability will go away in favor of only elite athletes having that opportunity.
 
I'd like to say I feel sorry for these athletes, but I don't. FAFO.

But it won't be them (basketball) that lose here.

After the players keep winning all of these lawsuits and are both private and public athletes are to be classified as employees, schools will be the next to sue the NCAA to remove the 6/8 or 7/7 with 2 M/W team sport mandates for D1 status.

You saw the quote from the sports law folks that says "college football and basketball players should not have to give up rights and compensation for small schools or Olympic sports." Well, that is who is going to find out and they weren't the ones, by and large, that fucked around.

We have the data. We know we collect like $10-12m in student fees and more from institutional funds on a yearly basis. We've seen estimates that it will cost millions more to pay salaries and employee compensation packages. Knowing we can't just come up with millions more to swing that, we will pare down to what we actually have some semblance of success or a decent donor base for. We'd likely end up with just men's and women's basketball, men's and women's track/XC and men's baseball. That would probably shave 200 athletes and shutter what, 6-7 sports here?

For Dartmouth, they have 16 men's and 18 women's sports. Men's basketball will likely mean many of those sports are axed (they already tried to cut sports a couple years back but were sued for Title IX issues) but hey, it's a dog eat dog world out there and college athletes are about to get an introduction.
 

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Setting aside what it would mean for fans, it's never made sense for public institutions that are supposed to be schools to be raking in the kind of money they do through athletics. Meanwhile you look at the highest paid college athletes through NIL and it's still nothing close to what top pros make. It's not a situation you see in other countries. So go ahead, blow it all up and start over.

For the Dartmouth players, I suspect this is more about conducting a social experiment and forcing landmark decisions than it is about making money. I doubt these kids come from families hard up for cash.
 
Setting aside what it would mean for fans, it's never made sense for public institutions that are supposed to be schools to be raking in the kind of money they do through athletics. Meanwhile you look at the highest paid college athletes through NIL and it's still nothing close to what top pros make. It's not a situation you see in other countries. So go ahead, blow it all up and start over.

For the Dartmouth players, I suspect this is more about conducting a social experiment and forcing landmark decisions than it is about making money. I doubt these kids come from families hard up for cash.

Not entirely true. Went down the rabbit hole when we started kicking the tires on Euros. Club sports are state sponsored and they basically get free training in exchange for being signed. Once they graduate high school, they can then get signed to the semi pro/pro level and essentially most are paid akin to minor league baseball. Only the true elite get really paid anything meaningful which is why you see a lot of them opt to come over here to get their secondary education paid for. I believe club to pro soccer operates the same way in Europe, too.

I do agree that America has taken SOME college sports to gross excess -- it's what we do. We are also definitely going to blow it up and start over, but I just can't see how the math works unless most college sports no longer exist to further fatten that upper level hog.
 
With all this nonsense going on in the background, I really hope ISU makes some kind of run this year before I just stop caring about college athletics altogether.
 
You and me both Sycamorefan96! I’m betting 90% of the students at ISU could care less if we had any athletic teams at all.
 
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